


children of the grave

by basketofnovas (slashmarks)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Canon Compliant, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Death Fetish, Fantastic Racism, Gen, Hazing, Sexual Harassment, troubling unchildlike behavior
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-18
Updated: 2020-09-18
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:26:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26519731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slashmarks/pseuds/basketofnovas
Summary: In first year, Draco is introduced to certain traditions of Slytherin House venerating the sacrifice to Slytherin's Monster fifty years before. In sixth, in the midst of his own problems, he's confronted with the fact that she's also a person.
Relationships: Draco Malfoy & Moaning Myrtle
Comments: 8
Kudos: 32





	children of the grave

**Author's Note:**

> Title, of course, from "Children of the Grave" by Black Sabbath.
> 
> Warnings: serial killer fetishism rituals conducted by a bunch of children, some of whom will definitely learn better when they grow up but haven't yet.

Draco's parents had both been in Slytherin, and he'd heard rumors about _that_ boys' dormitory before he went to school. So he had some idea where the first years were going on their first weekend of school.

It was mostly the boys who went, because - Draco knew instinctively - it was mostly the boys who would be teased if they didn't. There weren't all that many this year: Vince and Greg and Theo and him, and then Blaise, the only unknown. Pansy came too, because Pansy went everywhere with him, and then Daphne Greengrass, who said later that her father who'd died in Azkaban had been in Slytherin and she'd been curious about if he'd put anything on the shrine.

The dormitory was special because, everyone said, it was where the Heir of Slytherin had slept when he was at Hogwarts. Nobody knew his name, and there were regular arguments about which bed had been his, but they knew the room. During Draco's tenure it belonged to the boys in the class two above him, so they had an audience of snickering thirteen year olds for their first visit.

Theo's cousin Damian Nott was the new boys' Prefect, so he led the way, though Draco saw him roll his eyes when he pushed the door open. There was a little cluster of older students - they were all older students then - with Damian; Asbolus Carrow and Wyatt Crabbe, who made a face at Vince, and a bored looking Adrian Pucey, and the lone pair of girls, the twins Flora and Hestia Carrow, who were only second years and kept giggling. The escorts nearly matched the first years in numbers this year.

Draco, who hadn't hit a single growth spurt as far as he could tell, had to crane to see over the others. This was not acceptable. He pounded Vince in the shoulder and muttered, " _Move_ ," and reluctantly, space was made so that he could see.

The shrine was at the very end of the room. 

A wardrobe had been sacrificed to it long ago, and never reclaimed when the room remade itself for smaller class numbers. The doors were permanently spread wide to create more space to write on and pin pictures. The shrine had long ago spread from the space within the wardrobe to the doors, the top, and from there onto the surrounding walls and floor space. On one side it was starting to seep around the corner. All this space was filled with little photographs and sketches and messages and small objects, but Draco took those in from the corner of his eyes, because he was fixated on the center piece.

It had been someone's art project years and years ago, before staff shortages resulted in Art dropping from the curriculum. It was a white plaster statue, made by someone with talent but a limited amount of practice: a young girl, naked and slumped back on her elbows, legs spread wide. Her long dark hair fell over her face, and a long silver serpent wrapped around her, charmed to twine and slither continuously.

There were two pieces of color on the statue. One was between the girl's legs, and Draco didn't want to look at it. The other was the blood dripping down her neck, below the serpent's head. Its fangs were sunk into her throat.

The center of the shrine contained two more objects. One was a photograph, carefully framed and propped up with a few inches of clear space around it so it would stand out. Draco couldn't see it clearly from where they had stopped in the middle of the room. The other, just in case you'd missed the point, was a phrase scrawled in red letters around the statue's head, on the back of the wardrobe cabinet: "SLYTHERIN'S MONSTER POPPED MYRTLE WARREN'S CHERRY."

"What does that _mean_?" Theo muttered next to him.

"It's a muggle phrase, Theo," Damian said unenthusiastically. Draco knew there were two factions in Slytherin who fought over the shrine and its contents. While Damian as new Prefect had to come, Draco guessed he might not be on the side that had decorated the shrine most recently. "It means it took her virginity."

Draco knew what this meant, not because he knew muggle slang, but because his parents had told him about the shrine. He hadn't really put any images to the words before, though. Now he experienced a few moments of hazy confusion as to how on earth that would work with a snake.

"Do you know the story of Slytherin's monster?" Asbolus Carrow asked, grinning nastily. They made various noises of agreement or denial, and he went on, "You all know who Salazar Slytherin is. If you _didn't_ know - and none of you lot are mudbloods - you would have been told by now. You know he helped to found the school, but the other founders betrayed him, and he left after an argument with Godric Gryffindor.

"What you might not all know is that when he left the school, he didn't leave it unprotected."

Wyatt Crabbe picked up from here. "He built a secret chamber in the school, and passages to allow access from it to every room and hall. In the chamber lives a monster that would always answer to the call of Salazar - or his true heir."

"And the part you almost certainly don't know," Flora Carrow said, eyes bright with malice, "Is that in the nineteen-forties, his true heir came to the school. He opened the chamber, and used it to cleanse the school of mudbloods--"

"But he was stopped," Hestia said, picking up from her sister. "They were going to close the school, and Salazar didn't want that, Hogwarts had to go on to educate true wizards and witches. So the heir took only one victim, as a sign to us all that he's still here, and he'll return..."

"And because she was honored to be his sign, Slytherin House put up this shrine to his sacrifice," Asbolus said, picking back up. "Boys and girls, this is Myrtle Warren, the sacrifice to Slytherin's Monster. Generations of Slytherins have come to remember her and the heir, and leave her gifts."

"And if you're brave, you'll be among them," Wyatt said. "Who's first?"

Draco knew this was his moment to impress the rest of the first years; even the girls who weren't here would be told later. He moved without even starting to think of what to do, just to make sure he'd be first, and the older students parted for him.

Draco edged up to the shrine, trying to keep his eyes off the centerpiece, off the bright red between the statue's legs. Avoiding it, he saw the framed photograph.

It seemed totally out of place, compared to the obscene graffiti and pictures littering the shrine. It was surrounded by a mix of burnt out and still lit candle stubs, small pieces of candy, and other normal spirit offerings. It wasn't moving, and at first Draco thought it must actually be a student's artwork, but when he came closer he realized it was indeed a photograph in black and white, unmoving. 

Of course, Slytherin's monster would have taken a mudblood, and muggle pictures didn't move. The picture showed a girl, dark haired and solemn eyed, with thick, horn-rimmed glasses. Her hair was in two stiff braids, and her lower lip stuck out like she might cry. She couldn't have been much older than Draco. Maybe a year or two at most.

Draco looked away from the photo too, and read a bit of graffiti on the inside of the door instead. He felt a tiny shock, recognizing his mother's cursive handwriting in all capital letters: "MYRTLE MOANS THINKING OF THE HEIR'S COCK." He wasn't exactly sure what it meant, but he snickered anyway to show that he understood and took his quill out of his pocket. 

His eyes darted between the graffiti and the snake, and he knew what to write, then. He'd overheard his father and his father's friends talking about girls lots of times. There was a little empty space next to a sketch of a pile of body parts with two braids sticking out the top, and Draco leaned in to write, "MYRTLE TAKES SNAKE TAIL UP THE ARSE," trying not to giggle too obviously, before breaking away. 

Pansy was at the front, straining on her toes to be next. Well, she always wanted to do whatever he did. He'd done it first!

Despite the helpful caption referring to Myrtle's moaning and despite the regular visits Draco made to the shrine (every year his faction put the shrine back together after the teachers had done their best to banish it over the summer; and they introduced the newest first years; and after the other faction periodically seized the shrine and tried to sanitize it into a proper memorial, as though a twelve year old mudblood would have known or appreciated that in the first place), he didn't actually make the connection to the ghost who haunted the second floor girls' bathroom until his sixth year.

Sixth year was in many ways the worst year of his life. The next year was plenty bad, but no one actually expected anything from him by then except that he follow orders. And at least he had his mother and aunt and uncles around to shield him from the worst of the Dark Lord. Sixth year was the one he spent trying to live up to all of his ideals and all of his father's expectations; sixth year was when he had the creeping realization not that he was _incapable_ \- he did actually do what no one else had, smuggled Death Eaters directly into the castle, ambushed Albus Dumbledore - but that he wished he was.

He was crying on the relevant day and he wasn't enjoying it. Draco was no stranger to tears, but always before sixth year he had had them loudly and enthusiastically, with the certain knowledge they would get him his way. He cried when he wanted something: presents or special permissions from his father, attention from his mother, sympathy from Pansy. 

He still wanted something. He wanted everything to be like it was _last_ year before Father was arrested and the Dark Lord didn't bother getting him out of prison, or better still the years before it, before the Dark Lord had been back at all. He just knew better than to think crying was going to help. There was exactly one benefit to crying in the boys' bathroom off the dungeons, which was that it was nearly always deserted - Slytherins would just go into the common room, other houses didn't want to linger in the dungeons - and therefore it was unlikely anyone would see or hear him. When he was done he could go back into the common room and resume his cool, confident act.

Bathrooms, Draco thought, were a terrible place to cry. There was nowhere to throw yourself comfortable, nothing soft to bury your face in, and they often smelled. They were not scenic or dignified. But if he cried in the bathroom he had a mirror handy to wash up with at least, and if someone started to open the door and was delayed by the Sticking Charm he had applied to it, he would have time to hide in a stall where no one could reasonably pursue him.

He was thinking about this fact in order to avoid thinking about what an utter disaster the cursed necklace had been, which in turn was his avoidance of the question of what he was going to do next and how on _earth_ he, an underage sixteen year old, was going to murder Albus Dumbledore, when someone - a girl - said, "Ooo, what's wrong?"

Draco had a number of reactions to this interruption. He wanted to pull out his wand and try out the _Cruciatus_ , which Aunt Bella had taught him over the summer; he wanted to pull his hood up in case the audience had not yet seen his face; and he wanted profoundly to die on the spot and thereby leave his problems behind. These urges struck him strongly and simultaneously so that he did nothing, only froze; and that gave him time to look in the mirror and see that the person who had interrupted was a ghost.

"This is a boys' bathroom, you know," he said. He was trying for his usual sneer but it came out frog-like. He had been crying for a while.

"I"m just visiting," said the ghost peevishly. "Anyway, I'm not _seeing_ anything, you've still got all your clothes on." 

She sounded disappointed by this. Far from being put off, Draco's confidence was restored by it; he was used to girls wanting to see him without his clothes on. "Well, if you promise not to mention this to anyone we could see about that."

The ghost looked for a minute like she might take him up on this fantastic offer, but then she squinted. "Why _were_ you crying?" she said. "I understand, you know. I used to cry in bathroom all the time, when I was alive. I was crying when I died, and it was in the girls' bathroom upstairs on the second floor."

Draco considered this statement. Contrary to what she apparently thought, it did not make her seem particularly appealing as a confidante. On the other hand if he played along he might be able to get her to agree to a magically binding promise not to tell anyone he'd been crying all alone in the boys' bathroom in the dungeons. 

"Well," he said, and let his lips tremble again. "I guess I could tell you - since you understand - but..."

"But?" the ghost said, leaning in conspiratorially. Her eyes gleamed with anticipation. She reminded Draco very much of Rita Skeeter.

"Would you be willing to promise?" Draco said breathily. He put all of his heart into this performance. "Just so I could be sure you won't tell? I learned a spell - it would go both ways, so you could tell me things too - we could be friends..."

The ghost wavered at the introduction of magic but the lure of someone confiding in her was obviously too strong. "Well," she said, "If it would make you feel _safe_... You _are_ , you know, with me..."

"Of _course_ ," Draco said and before she could argue he pulled out his wand and cast the spell; "--Now we can't tell anyone about each other's secrets," he said. 

"So we can be friends!" the ghost said, sounding rather inappropriately thrilled by this idea.

"Absolutely," lied Draco.

"My name's Myrtle," the ghost said, and Draco had just an instant to think, aha, yes, _Moaning Myrtle_ , good job he got her under an oath of secrecy before she blabbed that she'd seen Draco Malfoy sobbing to the whole school, before she added, "Myrtle Warren."

Draco had restored the shrine to his faction eleven times now and handled the photograph several times. The last name of the victim of the Heir of Slytherin was seared into his mind.

What he had found out much more recently, from Aunt Bella over the summer, was that that Heir of Slytherin had been the Dark Lord himself when he was at school. The Dark Lord, then, had murdered Moaning Myrtle when at school with her; just as he was now threatening to kill Draco.

"Maybe you do understand," he said under his breath. "I'm Draco Malfoy. By the way."

"Why were you crying, Draco?" Myrtle cooed, with no reaction whatsoever to his name.

She really was repulsive, Draco thought, and he could nearly understand why the Dark Lord had killed her. Then he thought of the shrine, the statue of the naked girl with the snake, and the solemn child staring out of the gray muggle photograph. There was a whispered rumor in Slytherin that Myrtle's family had never bothered to claim her body, or perhaps had not been told, and she was buried on school grounds. 

Thinking of it, he just felt sick. He hadn't really gotten the point of the stuff on the shrine when he was eleven. Now...

"There's this man," Draco said, exhaling heavily, and staring down into the sink again. "And if I don't do what he wants, he's said he's going to kill me... I'll tell you all about it. Maybe you'll have an idea."

**Author's Note:**

> [Find this](https://slashmarks.tumblr.com/post/629556333289570304/children-of-the-grave), and me, on tumblr!


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